Sylvia Lau: Fish, Women and Inclusion in Dalian

I’m surrounded by leaders, young scientists, female innovators and entrepreneurs from different nationalities here at the World Economic Forum in Dalian, and I’m very happy to see there is such a diverse delegation.

It’s especially apt since the theme of this 11th Annual Meeting of the New Champions is “Achieving Inclusive Growth in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s made a great point about inclusiveness in his opening ceremony speech, where he suggested “fast fish should help slow fish to go faster” in order to have a more sustainable environment for all fish. Similarly, I believe female representation can help inspire and to pave the way for other women.

Today, I attended five sessions and every one of them had females as part of the panelists. It is not easy to accomplish this feat when we are talking about topics such as Robots, Artificial Intelligence , & Internet-of-Things, which remain mostly male domains. One particular session called Bridging the Gender Divide hit home for me as it discussed how The Fourth Industrial Revolution may help improve gender parity with more flexible work arrangements. However, this really depends on our mindsets and commitment. If we are mindful, we can use this revolution to empower females (and males).

As a global firm, JLL is committed to drive diversity and inclusion in our daily agenda. Our Diversity and Inclusion initiatives focus on 3Gs: Gender, Geography and Generation. We embrace our differences and run mentoring programmes, Unconscious Bias trainings and cultural exchanges to promote mobility and strengthen our commitment to openness.

Personally, I’m also heartened to have role models like Hu Wei Wei (the founder of Mobike) making a huge impact when Mobike was launched. I definitely hope to see more of such female role models in society. And this forum has inspired to me to learn from these trail-blazers.